Physician Group Sues Trump Health Agencies Over Scrubbed Sites, Data

Physicians have launched a legal challenge against the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and federal health agencies for removing webpages from health-related websites.

Doctors for America filed a lawsuit in federal court against the OPM, CDC, FDA, and HHS over the removal of a “broad range of health-related data and other information used every day” by health professionals and researchers. The announcement was made on Tuesday by Public Citizen Litigation Group, the legal arm of the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen.

Public Citizen Litigation Group is representing Doctors for America, a nonprofit comprised of 27,000 physicians and medical students from all 50 states, in the suit.

“Like many of my colleagues, I am both a doctor who takes care of patients and a researcher,” Reshma Ramachandran, MD, MPP, MHS, a member of the board of directors for Doctors for America, said in a statement. “Removing critical clinical information and datasets from the websites of CDC, FDA, and HHS not only puts the health of our patients at risk, but also endangers research that improves the health and healthcare of the American public.”

“Federal public health agencies must reinstate these resources in full to protect our patients,” Ramachandran added.

The removal of the webpages and data “creates a dangerous gap in the scientific data available to monitor and respond to disease outbreaks, deprives physicians of resources that guide clinical practice, and takes away key resources for communicating and engaging with patients,” the complaint said. “The removal of this information deprives researchers of access to information that is necessary for treating patients, for developing clinical studies that produce results that accurately reflect the effects treatments will have in clinical practice, and for developing practices and policies that protect the health of vulnerable populations and the country as a whole.”

The suit challenges the actions of the OPM in directing agencies to remove or change webpages and data, and the subsequent removal of the public information by the CDC, FDA, and HHS, pointing to the Administrative Procedure Act and the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995.

“Defendants failed to provide required notice of their action to remove these vitally important webpages and datasets, and their actions are arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with the law,” the complaint argued. “Defendants failed to provide any rationale for removing any specific webpage or dataset, and any such justification would fly in the face of the longstanding recognition that the webpages and datasets are essential to the government’s goal of promoting public health.”

Specifically, the complaint pointed to an OPM memorandum issued January 29, entitled, “Initial Guidance Regarding President Trump’s Executive Order Defending Women,” said to have required that agency heads, “‘terminate any [agency programs] that promote or inculcate gender ideology'” and “‘[t]ake down all outward facing media (websites, social media accounts, etc.) that inculcate or promote gender ideology,'” by 5 p.m. EST on January 31.

In response, the complaint stated, agencies “removed numerous webpages and databases related to medical treatment and public health.”

Some of the webpages removed by the CDC included, “The Youth Risk Behavioral Surveillance System,” “CDC Contraceptive Guidance for Health Care Providers,” as well as those for HIV prevention, monitoring, and testing, according to the complaint. Those taken down by the FDA included the “Study of Sex Differences in the Clinical Evaluation of Medical Products,” and “Diversity Action Plans to Improve Enrollment of Participants from Underrepresented Populations in Clinical Studies.”

Doctors for America is asking the court to declare the actions unlawful, order the removed materials to be restored, and prohibit the agencies from taking similar action in the future.

MedPage Today previously reported that the CDC had instructed scientists to retract or pause publication of any research manuscript being considered by any medical or scientific journal. Specifically, this involved removing references to a list of “forbidden terms”: “Gender, transgender, pregnant person, pregnant people, LGBT, transsexual, non-binary, nonbinary, assigned male at birth, assigned female at birth, biologically male, biologically female,” according to an email sent to CDC employees.

MedPage Today also previously reported that, in the wake of executive orders from President Trump, OPM followed up with a memo to agency leaders, outlining “steps to close agency DEIA [diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility] offices.”

The agencies named as defendants in the suit from Doctors for America either declined to comment on pending litigation or did not immediately respond to request for comment.

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